Tag: Christian Mittelstaedt

When Carleton’s 2017 fall semester starts in September, students will see the potential benefits of an overhauled Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) system. The upcoming school year will see the introduction of a new Ontario Student Grant (OSG), a program the provincial Liberal government hopes will make post-secondary education more affordable. On March 29, the government announced that it would start accepting applications for the new OSAP program. But how will students actually be affected? Free tuition? Not quite yet The most talked about change aims to make post-secondary education more affordable for low-income students. Universities are worried about declining enrolment and hope that lower fees will encourage students to consider post-secondary education. Under the grant, students whose annual family income is under $50,000 will have average tuition covered by the […]

Ottawa has opened the door to a new type of affordable housing that has gained popularity in other cities like Vancouver. Coach houses—small residential units built on existing lots—were made legal in Ottawa last year, a first for Ontario cities. “People don’t have to buy more land, and they get more housing at a reduced cost,” said Tim Moerman, a city planner that helped bring coach houses to Ottawa. “But to me the real benefit is that it allows people to get more creative with housing.” The University of Toronto (U of T) is one such organization exploring affordable housing options. The school has announced a pilot project to build two laneway houses near campus, according to a recent release […]

Changes to Ontario’s student loan program can’t come soon enough for the province’s colleges. Falling enrolment at post-secondary institutions has been particularly disastrous for colleges. Without action, it could potentially send schools into nearly $2 billion of debt in eight years, according to a recent report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, an advisory firm. “The government has been only funding colleges for enrolment growth,” said Linda Franklin, president and CEO of Colleges Ontario. “What that means is if your school’s enrolment goes down two per cent, you get less money from the government.” Franklin said an aging population likely means that enrolment will keep falling. “We’ve just hit a period in time where the echo boom has just gone through post-secondary [education],” Franklin […]

The Ontario government has announced it will leave the existing tuition cap framework for universities in place for another two years. The existing framework means schools can continue to raise Ontario tuition fees by as much as three per cent a year, a cap that has some student advocacy groups upset. “It’s a framework that isn’t particularly good for students,” said Gayle McFadden, spokesperson for the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS)-Ontario. “What we were calling for was a framework that calls for no increases.” Ontario Ministry of Education spokesperson Sean Greson said the government will use the next two years to ease the switch to a new Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP). “We decided to maintain the existing framework to […]

Canada’s federal debt is more than $633 billion. By the time you’re finished reading this, Canada’s fast-growing debt will probably be thousands more. Generation Screwed, a project started by the Canadians Taxpayers Federation to inform young Canadians about how debt impacts them, brought a giant “debt clock” to 13 campuses across Ontario and Quebec earlier this month. The group brought the clock to Carleton on Sept. 12, and was even “thrown off” Laval Campus for “unsanctioned activism,” according to the Toronto Sun Aaron Gunn, executive director of Generation Screwed, said the tour aimed to bring an awareness of debt to Canadian students. “Students need to worry about it because it’s a long term issue,” Gunn said. “Nothing’s going to happen […]